


changkyu | could you repeat that?

by plincess_cho (ai_hao)



Series: Fic Requests [66]
Category: DBSK | Tohoshinki | TVfXQ | TVXQ, Super Junior
Genre: Author: Ai, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-19
Updated: 2015-07-19
Packaged: 2018-04-10 01:05:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4371281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ai_hao/pseuds/plincess_cho
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Changmin stares at his ceiling and misses Kyuhyun.</p>
            </blockquote>





	changkyu | could you repeat that?

**Author's Note:**

> Dialogue Prompt: “Could you repeat that?” 
> 
> Requested by gyullible

The minute Changmin is discharged from the military, he wants to race over to the Super Junior dorms for a raucous night of gaming and wine, but then he remembers:  _Kyuhyun’s not there anymore._

So he waits. The time drags by agonizingly slowly. His youngest sister catches him sitting on his bed in his parents’ house counting back days on a calendar. “Counting the days until you’re done being a loser?” she asks. “I don’t think that calendar goes for long enough.” He throws a pillow at her. She shuts the door just in time so the offending fluff bounces to the floor. 

Changmin goes back to the calendar and finds the date he’s looking for. In 28 days, they’ll be back together again, getting drunk, wrecking havoc, passing out and not remembering a thing. Changmin flops back against his bed and stares up at the ceiling with a sigh. 

He remembers lying on this bed, staring up at the same ceiling, when TVXQ went on their first hiatus. He’d spent so many nights wondering what would happen, what the future would hold, and what he would do. What he  _should_  do. What he  _wanted_  to do. What he  _would_  do.

He remembers going over to Kyuhyun’s family home and drinking himself into a blissful stupor. They somehow managed to stumble into Kyuhyun’s room and collapse onto the bed together, looking up at the ceiling. Changmin remembers making fun of the glow-in-the-dark solar system on Kyuhyun’s ceiling. Kyuhyun had pushed him off the bed.

And then he remembers going back to the Cho house after he and Yunho had decided about their enlistments and the future of TVXQ.

_“You don’t have to enlist with me, Changminnie,” Yunho had said. “You should have some time by yourself.”  
_

_“I... I don’t want to perform by myself,” Changmin found himself saying. “I don’t want to stand on stage alone.”_  

It had been true then and it was still true now. Part of it was purely selfish: Yunho was  _much_  better at catering to the fans than he was. Yunho’s solo stages gave him a chance to relax. But part of it was that Yunho had stayed with him when the other three left. He couldn’t imagine performing as one... as  _Changmin_. 

In the end, he’d gotten the various kyuline members to perform with him. Kyuhyun for the ballads (and the rock song he’d had to  _beg_  him to do), Minho for the power dance songs, and Junmyeon for the in betweens. It worked, oddly enough. But still. 

So he’d flopped out on the bed next to Kyuhyun and looked up at the same glow-in-the-dark stickers on the ceiling. The city lights of Seoul blocked out any stars in the night sky, so he settled for this: looking up at the stars and planets as if they held some set of magical secrets to life. 

“What’s going to happen to us?” he’d asked after a long period of silent star gazing.

“Like... TVXQ us or  _us_  us?” Kyuhyun asked.

“Either. Both. I don’t know,” Changmin replied. “You’re not enlisting until next year, right?”

“Yeah,” Kyuhyun replied. “I wanted to go earlier. Or later. Or not at all, but...”

“But the company decided,” Changmin finished for him. “I get it.”

They fell silent again. “This fucking sucks,” Changmin said. 

“Yeah,” Kyuhyun replied. He rolled over and reached under his bed for a bottle of wine. “Drink?”

Changmin comes back to the present and wishes that those glow-in-the-dark stars, the ones he’d teased Kyuhyun about relentlessly. He flips off his lights and stares up at the ceiling, but no matter how hard he wishes, the solar system doesn’t appear.

*

They see each other again almost three years to the day. Kyuhyun’s gotten skinnier, Changmin’s gotten broader, but they’ve both gotten older. Kyuhyun first greets his family, then his members, and then finally texts Changmin.

_gaemgyu: i’m starving let’s go eat_

Changmin can hardly reply fast enough.

_lord_voldemin: there’s a great place in jamwon-dong by the river. i’ll text you the address._

The restaurant is smoky from the small grills at every table. Changmin hurries in and looks around anxiously. He’s not there.

“Excuse me, are you looking for someone?” the waitress asks.

It takes Changmin a few seconds to realize she was talking to him. “I’m sorry, could you repeat that?”

She smiles at his nervousness. “Are you looking for someone?”

“Yes,” he says. “But he’s not here--oh.” Changmin spots him. He’s hidden in the back corner, already poking at some samgyupsal on the grill. He brushes past the waitress and tries not to run to the back of the restaurant. “Hey.”

Kyuhyun looks up and gives him a smirk. “Hey yourself,” he replies. “You’re late.” But he stands up to give him a hug anyways.

*

Afterwards, they find their way back to Kyuhyun’s parents’ house. It hasn’t changed; they haven’t changed; and what he realizes is, his friendship with Kyuhyun hasn’t changed either. They break into the wine fridge, drink until everyone else goes to bed, and fall into Kyuhyun’s bed together and look up at the stars.

“You still have this,” Changmin says. It’s a fact, not a question.

“Yeah,” Kyuhyun replies. “Guess military men don’t have the solar systems on their ceiling.”

“No,” Changmin says. “But I like it.”

Kyuhyun snorts. “Come again?”

“Shut up,” Changmin mumbles. There’s a pause. “I missed you.”

“I missed you too,” Kyuhyun says softly. They both stare up at the ceiling, thinking about their enlistment, thinking about the time that’s gone by, thinking about the future.

“Alright, enough of this greasy crap,” Changmin says. “Have any more wine?”

“Thought you’d never ask.”


End file.
